A Pirate of Exquisite Mind: The Life Of William Dampier by Diana Preston, Michael Preston

William Dampier, (1651-1715), used to be an English adventurer and pirate who preyed on ships at the Spanish major. negative and ill-educated and decided to make his fortune, he still had a fondness for exploration and clinical examine. Dampier used to be the 1st to map the winds and currents of the world's oceans; led the 1st recorded social gathering of Englishmen to set foot on Australia - eighty years prior to prepare dinner; wrote approximately Galapagos natural world one hundred fifty years earlier than Darwin, who drew on Dampier's notes in his personal paintings; was once the 1st commute author: a brand new VOYAGE world wide used to be rapid bestseller while it used to be released in 1697 - stated to have motivated the novels of fast and Defoe. a guy jam-packed with contradictions: he who accomplished lots 'blew it' later in existence, declining into scandal, failure or even farce. a different guy prior to his time, he lived a wide a part of his lifestyles between pirates but controlled to maintain what Coleridge referred to as his "exquisite refinement of mind". A vintage instance of the easiest narrative heritage.

Hetta Coffey is a sassy Texan with a snazzy yacht, and she's now not afraid to take advantage of it!

A globe-trotting engineer with angle, a penchant for hassle, and a yacht, Hetta is again, and this time she's guidance us into sizzling Mexican waters.
Miffed that holiday plans along with her chronically absent boyfriend, Jenks Jenkins, have long gone awry, she accepts a role in Baja.

So what, if she and her pal Jan are spectacularly unqualified to take her yacht on a thousand-mile cruise within the jap Pacific Ocean in the course of typhoon season?

Hiring a good-looking, if a little bit fishy captain for the journey may well retain them off the rocks, yet most likely won't do an analogous for her destiny with Jenks. in the meantime, a bit eye sweet on board can't be all undesirable.

Hetta's fierce independence impels her to take on a truly ecocnomic (if environmentally and politically improper) undertaking south of the border. actual to shape, her irreverent nature and disrespect for chance quickly swamps her in a sea of mayhem, unlawful extraterrestrial beings, a pesky whale, and a menacing Mexican machinator.

Set sail for Baja Mexico's Magdalena Bay as Hetta Coffey leads us once again right into a morass of intrigue that would continue you guffawing, breathless, and in need of extra.

On a day similar to many ahead of it, Brad Van Orden sat at his table. while a coworker meandered prior his window, Brad succumbed to an impulse and blurted out the main outlandish factor he may perhaps imagine of-"Hey Steve, let's force your hippie bus to Tierra del Fuego. " This triggered Steve's halfhearted reaction: "I don't imagine so.

Regardless of the advance of a faster-than-light force, Earth's house software has been within the doldrums for hundreds of years, as has Earth itself. Hyperspace being most unlikely to navigate with out beacons at which to attempt, there isn't any substitute yet to attend for vessels despatched out at sub-light pace many years formerly to discover someplace worthy going.

As soon as a Hollywood stuntman until eventually he miscalculated on a fancy stunt and despatched his colleague Angelo Sacchetti to a watery grave, Edward Cauthorne is compelled through Mafia enforcers to go looking for the stuntman he inspiration he had unintentionally killed in Singapore years previous.

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As he lighted one he was conscious that the door to the inner cabin had opened. He turned, to meet Juliana Salcedo y Monies. And amazement grew within him. CHAPTER IV. CANAUGHAN BARGAINS. GERALD DESMOND had as much knowledge of women as the next man, and was always willing to learn more. As he looked at Juliana Salcedo he realized that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen; exotically beautiful, yet marked with the golden hair and gray eye of the purest Spanish blood. Her gown of palest green island silk accentuated her high coloring, the rich curves of cheek and arm and figure.

Her gaze went to the water pitcher in the corner, which had been filled that morning. “Thirst? ” She looked at the large square port, which was open, and smiled at the sunlit sea. 51 52 THE OPIUM SHIP “Marriage? There is the escape. ” And, sitting down, she composedly began to clean her automatic pistol. CHAPTER VI. THE SEA TRYST. CAPTAIN CANAUGHAN, Desmond, and O’Sullivan sat smoking in their cabin the afternoon after Canaughan’s rescue. All three had slept long and lustily, but the skipper was chafing under enforced inaction.

I’m comin’ to that,” retorted the fiddler. “D’ye mind there was only one true word in that poem, sir? For a fact there was! And that was where he spoke about an Ulsterman always improving —” “True for ye there,” interjected the skipper. “An Ulsterman always does improve —” “— like bad fish in July,” added O’Sullivan slyly, throwing 53 54 THE OPIUM SHIP Desmond a wink. ” roared the skipper furiously. “If ye were not a little runt of a man not worth me attention I’d break your back over me knee, ye little herring!